Unique Selling Point: The Shortest Way to Brand Success

Posted on: 17 Feb, 2018

Whether you own a business or planning on starting one, you must believe in its success to take that risk. In this age of innovation, the chances are you’re competing with someone in your niche. So what sets you apart from everyone else? Your product or service must have something different. It has something special that drives you to believe in your idea and go through anything to see it through. The question is: will everyone else see the potential in your idea? In the end, no matter how revolutionary your product is, you still need to sell it to the world. This doesn’t mean selling out or looking for new more profitable ideas. However, you need to help peopleshare your perception and why your product is so special. You need to equip your ideas with a unique selling point.

What Is USP in Business?

In short, it is the thing that makes your product or service better than the rest. A unique selling point, or unique selling proposition (USP) is introduced by the seller as the thing that the whole business revolves around. This may seem simple, but it really isn’t. The truth is, when we imagine our company succeeding, we want it to surpass the competition in every aspect.

If you own a restaurant you want to have the best chicken, the best steak, the best desserts, and so on. However, in reality advertising that would be a marketing nightmare. Studies showed that customers don’t respond well to someone trying to sell them everything at the same time. A unique selling points prevents you from falling for your own ambitions. It’s a constant reminder that what you’re selling is a premium dining experience, but your specialty is the best chicken in the city.

Pinpointing your USP requires some hard soul-seeking and innovation. One approach to begin is to break down how different organizations utilize their unique selling points to succeed. This requires close examination of other organizations’ advertisements. If you manage to dissect what they say they offer, you can get an idea about how organizations separate themselves from others.

Why Is Having a USP Important?

There are many benefits to figuring out your unique selling point early on. Every day wasted without something that sets you apart from competition means less customers. Less customers means less revenue, and eventually failing. In the end, everyone wants to see their ideas through to success while making a lot of money in the process, and a unique selling point will do just that.

1. Focus Leads to Excellence

When someone is feeling ill, they don’t just go to any doctor and get the treatment they need. They usually go to a hospital, then seen by a specialist. If a patient requires surgery, it has to be a specialist in a specific field according to the patient needs. Why is that? Because the human body is a complex system, and to perfect a practice you need to focus on as small an area as possible.

Whether it’s to treat people and save lives, or to make a name for himself, specialization is the key. In the end being exceptionally good at one field is much better than being average in everything. The same rules apply to business.

2. Inspires Trust

Not only is having a unique selling point better for you, it also inspires customers to trust you more. The average person knows that no one can do everything at once. If you claim to have the best in everything, then chances are you’re probably lying as far as they’re concerned. This doesn’t mean you can’t be known for more than one thing. Pizza hut for example, aside from pizza are known for their bread sticks, and chicken wings. However, they stay true to their unique selling point, which is the pizza.

3. Attracting More Customers

You might be thinking that appealing to a larger crowd with different needs is better. If you shoot at more targets, you’re more likely to hit something, right? But in reality, someone who just hits targets will never win a medal at the Olympics. It’s much better to focus your efforts on one target and hitting that bullseye. When you’re selling it’s just the same, you want to strike gold, you want to be the best at what you do. After you’ve made your name as a leader and specialist, opportunities to hit more targets will present themselves. Eventually, it’s much more profitable and effective to attract more customers in a single segment.

How to Find Your Unique Selling Point?

It’s likely that many of your prospective customers have difficulty deciding which option in your industry is the one that deserves their time, money and trust.

This selection can be a daunting process for customers that don’t have the experience to know what separates one competitor from another.

That’s why it is your job to assist them by making your unique selling proposition obvious, different and memorable enough that they can see exactly what your business has to offer that the other guys do not.

Step One: Vigorous Research

The initial step of composing a USP requires that you make a stride back and survey a portion of the nuts and bolts incorporated into your statement of purpose, strategy for success, advertise examination, and general business objectives.

Begin by noting some preparatory inquiries that recap what your business is offering, who you’re pitching it to and why you’re offering it.

Industry Research

Before you can find what makes your item special, you’ll have to realize what else is accessible for your forthcoming clients. That implies doing top to bottom investigation of every single one of your rivals. What items exist that can fill an indistinguishable need from your item? Survey their promoting materials, particularly sites. Check out autonomous audit associations for your industry to perceive what these examiners need to state. What’s more, experiment with the greatest number of contending items as you can to discover how they function.

Prospect Research

What do individuals who effectively claim an item from your industry need to state? A considerable amount, as a rule. In case you’re offering B2C items and administrations, at that point client audits online can be a goldmine of input. These remarks don’t simply discuss the item’s great and awful focuses, yet in addition benefit issues like conveyance costs, terrible technical support encounters and charging intricacies. Look for audits of your rivals’ items and additionally your own. On the off chance that you see a specific component or issue said as often as possible for a given item, record it. This will give you an astounding feel for what the commercial center thinks keeping in mind the end goal to design these items.

Client Research

Existing clients are a spectacular wellspring of data. Begin by connecting with your ‘best’ clients and inquire as to whether they can spend a couple of minutes giving you input on the items they possess. Utilise this data to pull together a short review and mail or email it to whatever is left of your clients. Try to offer them something to motivate them to take a survey; A voucher or a gift card. There are many different ways to ask a client for feedback.

Item Research

At this point you ought to have a quite decent feel for the opposition. You comprehend what items are out there and how well they stack up. It’s a great opportunity to look all the more carefully at your own particular item. What are your clients most satisfied with in your items? What are your item’s most obvious shortcomings? If you haven’t utilised your own item as of late, attempt it now and perceive how your own experience matches with what you’ve gotten notification from your clients.

Examination

You’ve pulled together a considerable amount of data at this point. It’s an ideal opportunity to audit the facts and think of a few conclusions. Look at your rundown of item qualities and shortcomings to the data you have on your rivals’ items. Are there areas where your item is more grounded than most or besting the competitor’s products? What about areas where your items are altogether weaker than practically identical items?

Step Two: Solve a Problem

It’s time to distinguish your intended interest group’s concern and clarify how your brand takes care of that issue. The outcome of the customer research might suggest a number of problems. It all depends on the industry or field.

Coffee shop frequenters might complain from the lack of coffee brew variety in the market. They may also find that premium coffee is too expensive. Another example is the establishment itself, like slow service, bad Wi-Fi, and so on.

Step Three: Identify Your Strength

Now that you have all your product attributes in front of you, it’s time to make a decision. What you distinguish here will be one of the essential reasons why your clients will pick you rather than a contender. This step is an extension to the previous step. In other words, now it’s time to address the customer’s problems with your brand’s strength points. Make a list of all the potential unique selling points.

The coffee shop might find they get the best coffee beans, cheapest Turkish coffee, the fastest service, and so on. It’s your task to solve one of the previous problems with your unique selling point. However, you must also cross reference the problems with your competitors. In the end, you don’t want to get into a dog fight with large corporations like Starbucks and their “premium coffee”. Find a realistic problem which best describes your product.

Step Four: Make a Promise

You managed to gather all the information on your product, customers, and competitors. You also created a list of candidate unique selling points. Now it’s time to finally claim your USP. Remember that your unique selling point basically infers a guarantee, or a vow, you are making to your clients.

The final step is to write down clearly, in simple words a USP statement. It has to be unique and cover the promise, you will live by as a brand. For example, “The largest coffee bean variety in the world.”

When you have a working unique selling point, it’s best to run it by others in your organization, or even make a focus group to quantify the effect it has. It might take a few tries. However, once you hit the ideal unique selling point, it can be a fundamental component of your showcasing tool compartment.

Always Consider Your USP

The problem with USP becoming a vital part of any starting business or brand, is that it has its own word. It has become a double edged sword, the downside is that everyone is doing it, which make it difficult to having a unique selling point that’s actually unique. However, by following the steps and using your creativity you dilute the chance of accidentally plagiarising a USP. Make sure that your unique selling proposition Is not only unique but also represents your brand fully. It has to be the briefest, most conclusive description of your brand.

To conclude, finding the perfect USP can be a tiring endeavour, but it’s the smartest way to get to your customers. It doesn’t stop at tailoring your vision and mission statements around it. A good unique selling point is the company’s compass. It resonates in everything you do from marketing to R&D, all the way to corporate strategy. Before making any business decision you have to ask: how does this serve our USP?